SHIELD Up
by NezumiPi
Summary: A look at the Agents of SHIELD as they grew up, modeled vaguely after the iconic film series. For each age, there is one vignette per character. Sometimes the vignettes share themes, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're pleasant, sometimes they're not. Different circumstances make different people who then make different circumstances. And Fitz is a fussy baby.
1. Age 18 Months

There is a film series that follows a group of children, interviewing them every seven years. It starts with _Age 7 in America_, then is followed by _14 Up in America_ and _21 Up in America_. The movies are incisive documentaries, humanizing both personal and political issues. This fanfic is just like that, except it's not a documentary, it's not incisive, and it won't humanize both personal and political issues. Instead, at each age or each life event, I'll have one vignette for each character. Sometimes a character will get a shorter story, sometimes they'll get a longer one. Just depends on how interesting their life was at the time.

As a note, all information should be correct to canon as of episode 02x15.

The Marvel world is very like our own, but sometimes songs or TV shows or products were released a few years earlier or later than in our timestream. This explains any seeming discrepancies you may notice.

* * *

**Age 18 Months**

* * *

_Skye (Mary Sue Poots)_

"The next page is the end of this book and there is a monster at the end of this book. Ooh, I am so scared!" added Sister Claire in her best Grover impression. "Please do not turn the page! Please, please, please!"

The baby girl laughed. She might not have understood all of the words, but she certainly understood the game they were playing. She reached out with her tiny hand and flipped the last page of the book, saying, "Mon-sah! Mon-sah!"

"Well, look at that! This is the end of the book and the only one here is me. I, lovable furry old Grover am the monster at the end of this book. And you were so scared. I told you there was nothing to be afraid of." Sister Claire closed the book and kissed the girl on the forehead. "Grover is such a silly monster. Just like you."

"Govuh," echoed the girl with a giggle, "Mon-sah."

"I wouldn't get too attached, Claire," said Sister Angela. "I'd wager our little Mary Sue is going to be adopted very soon." Angela had served in her present career for over two decades. There were three criteria that predicted which kids would get adopted, and Mary Sue met all three: She was young, she was healthy, and she was white. Well, the paperwork said she was "mixed race", but she could pass for white, and Sister Angela certainly wasn't above smudging a form or two if it meant a child could find a permanent home.

(And yes, the whole thing was uncomfortably racist, but Angela wasn't trying to change the world, just trying to make the best of the world she lived in.)

"I know," said Sister Claire, bouncing the baby on her knee. "It won't be long before someone takes a shine to our little monster."

* * *

_Leopold Fitz_

"Fizzit."

The woman bowed her head and shut her eyes tightly, trying to hold back tears. She loved her son – she did – but he could be so difficult and so demanding.

"Fizzit." Leopold pulled off his left shoe and banged it on the ground. "Fizzit!"

Leo had always been a fussy baby. She had never been able to get him on a schedule of eating or sleeping. He cried often and was hard to soothe. She had hoped at the time that these things weren't signs he was going to take after his moody, mercurial father. (A father who visited less and less. A father who was talking about moving to Belfast with his new girlfriend. In her darkest, most exhausted moments, Leo's mother wondered if an easier, more agreeable baby would have enticed his father to stay in the picture.)

She knew, from the other mums she met at the park, that most parents dread the day when their child learns to use the word 'no'. Leo could say no, she was fairly certain, but he didn't scream it in fits and tantrums the way other children did. Leo's tantrums were longer and stranger than that, and they centered around a single word:

"FIZ-ZIT!"

Leo pulled off his other shoe and threw it at his mother. "FIZZIT!" he wailed.

He was saying 'fix it'. It was what he said whenever something didn't seem right to him, and that happened an awful lot: Fix-it! Applesauce belongs in the blue bowl, not the red one. Fix-it! My toy plane won't fly. Fix-it! These two biscuits are different sizes.

It usually took his mother quite a while to guess what he was upset about. All the while, he'd get louder and more frustrated. And sometimes, the "problem" couldn't even be fixed – she could sew up his favorite blue pants, but she couldn't make the rip disappear.

And now he was yelling it again. Fizzit, fizzit, fizzit.

"Fix what?" she asked. "What is it you want me to fix?"

"Fizzit," said Leo, arms pressed across his chest in determination.

"What is the problem? Hmm? What's the problem now?" She knew there was no point in getting sarcastic with a one-year-old, but she just couldn't help it.

Leo stuck his now-shoeless right foot forward. "Fiz-zzz-zit," he whined.

"Fix what? Your sock?" Socks had needed fixing many times before. If there was a hole, if the whole sock had gotten turned around, or if she had dressed him in a hurry and put on one yellow sock and one white one.

Leo sniffled. That wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no either. His mother looked more closely at his socks. There were no holes and they were on the right way. And they were both blue. (What kind of baby worried about whether his socks matched?) No, wait. They didn't match. The stitching was different. They were the same color, but they weren't exactly the same.

She picked up her son and pulled off the offending socks, carrying him over to the shelves that served as a dresser. She searched through his socks until she found two that were a perfect match. "Is this it? Is this what you wanted?"

"Sa-ahs!" gurgled Leo, apparently pleased with her selection.

She swapped out the offending socks for their replacements, relieved to have averted a tantrum. Perhaps if she'd had more sleep, if she wasn't so worried about paying their bills, if she wasn't utterly overwhelmed by the task of raising a baby alone, it might have occurred to her how remarkable her little boy must be, to notice such a small difference between two socks.

* * *

_Jemma Simmons_

"Do you have time to talk now? Because we really need to talk about Jemma," said the woman, phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear.

"I have time. What's wrong?"

"Well, it's not…it's not wrong, exactly. I'm just…I don't know, maybe I'm worrying too much. But she's…"

Jemma's father twisted the phone cord in his hands. It wasn't like his wife to get this worked up. "Is there a problem? I can cancel the rest of this trip. Sandy will reschedule everything for me."

"No, you don't need to reschedule. It's not urgent. I just…well…she's _clever_."

"Of course she's clever. Her brother and sister are too. As are you and I, if I may say so myself. Quite inevitable." He relaxed onto the hotel bed cover. This wasn't an emergency, just a normal parenting crisis of confidence.

"She's more than just clever, then. When I was her age, my mum was delighted because I was making little sentences with a noun and a verb. Do you know what she said to me this morning? She said, _I want pancakes for breakfast, please, Mummy._"

"At least she's polite."

"You're not getting-" The woman sighed. "I told her we didn't have the things for pancakes, so she said, _Then I want toast instead, with the red jam, not the purple because I had grape jam yesterday and I've decided I don't fancy grapes._"

"So she's a bit picky?" The man was teasing a bit now. He didn't see his daughter as often as he'd like, and he wasn't an expert on child development, but even he could imagine how strange that sentence would sound coming out of a baby's mouth.

"Her older brother was three before he would have said something that long and complicated, and _he's_ the brightest in his class. What's going to happen to Jemma?"

"We'll work something out," he said, reassuringly. "Maybe we can get her a tutor."

"I'm not sure we can afford that."

"Maybe a student from the teachers' college, then. Or we could sign her up for music lessons. Mark from accounting was telling me he knows a Suzuki instructor who will teach toddlers the violin. Or we'll read to her a lot. She's just smart. She's not sick or something. There are a lot of worse things for a child to be."

* * *

_Phillip Coulson_

"Cah-MER!" cried Phillip, waving his arms over his head.

"He's saying 'Camero'," said the boy's father.

His mother shook her head with a tolerant smile. "I really don't think he is."

"Cah-MER! Cah-MER!"

"That's definitely 'Camero'."

"Why would he have a word for a specific type of car he's never seen when he doesn't even use the word 'car' yet?"

"I hear what you're saying, little man," said the boy's father, picking him up and pointedly ignoring his wife. "You were born with good taste in cars and we'd be fools to ignore your advice."

Phillip liked to be picked up. "Cah-MER!" he shouted again. He was talking quite regularly now, but no matter what he said, he always put the stress on the second syllable. He greeted his parents: "Ma-MA!" and "Da-DEE!" He called out to the neighbor's dog: "Yo-VER!" He requested his favorite blanket: "Ban-KEE!" The overall effect was to make him sound perpetually pleasantly surprised.

"Put him in his high chair," said the woman. She put down cheap plastic red-and-blue plate with some mushy pasta and boiled peas.

Phillip ate agreeably, though he made as much mess as any other child his age. He picked up individual noodles, sometimes eventually eating them, but just as often dropping them on the floor. When he had eaten or transferred all of his dinner, he picked up the plate with both hands and threw it to the floor. "Cah-MER!"

"No," said his mother. "No, we don't throw food." She sighed. "I'll clean up the floor if you give him a bath?"

His father stood up, addressing Phillip directly. "Yeah, you do need a bath. You're pretty much filthy between the peas and playing in the garage. We'll get you all clean and into your pajamas."

The boy's parents cleaned up before sitting down to their own dinner – real family meals would probably have to wait a year or so – but the evening was peaceful. Phillip only started to fuss when they tried to put him to bed. He rocked back and forth against the bars of his crib, reaching to the floor with a whimper. "Cah-MER!"

They offered him a pacifier, a bottle, a blanket, a teddy bear, all to no avail. Until his mother saw exactly where he was pointing. She picked the little doll up and deposited in the crib.

"Cah-MER!" answered Phillip in a satisfied tone. He hugged his Captain America and went to sleep.

* * *

_Grant Ward_

"Is your husband coming, Mrs. Ward?"

"No, he couldn't get away from work."

"Well," said the man, "I'm Dr. Martin and I've been overseeing Grant's case. I want to start with the good news: it's definitely not epilepsy. His EEG is completely normal. In fact, the episode he had wasn't even a seizure. It was what we call syncope. It's more like fainting."

"He fainted?"

"Mrs. Ward, are you aware that your son hasn't gained any weight since his 12-month checkup?"

"I'm sorry, what does that have to do with his episode?"

"He's just under 20 pounds. That's very small for his height."

"Yes, and again, what does that have to do with-"

"You have an older son, Christian? He was admitted here three times as a baby, found to be malnourished all three times."

"Are you accusing me of something, Dr. Martin?"

"No, ma'am. Not at all. It's possible they share some kind of genetic problem that's interfering with metabolism. I'd like to get them both in here at the same time for testing." Maybe that was a lie. Maybe it wasn't. It was plausible at least.

"But Christian's fine now. He outgrew the problem. The pediatrician said his height and weight were normal."

"Well, sometimes food becomes a battleground between parents and kids, especially toddlers." Dr. Martin reached into the pocket on his lab coat and pulled out a business card. "This is the contact information for our social worker. She's an expert in failure-to-thrive cases." In reality, the hospital was supposed to contact social services directly if a child presented with nutritional deficits, but…well…the Wards donated an awful lot of money.

Mrs. Ward wasn't precisely sure what 'failure-to-thrive' was, but she didn't like the sound of it. Still, she knew the protocol in situations like this. She took the card with a demure smile. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll get in touch with her as soon as possible." That was a lie, plain and simple. Even if she did want a stranger to criticize her parenting, they certainly couldn't have the bad publicity. Something like that would never stay quiet.

When she entered the examining room, she saw Grant sitting idly in a metal crib. He showed no sign of recognizing her return, but he tensed as she approached. He let out a cry as if he were bursting into tears, but cut himself off and returned to silence. He balled his hands up and held his little fists in front of his face, the yellow plastic hospital ID tag resting on his cheek.

Saying nothing, Mrs. Ward lifted her son and took him home.

* * *

_Melinda Qiaolian May_

"She should be talking," said the woman.

"The pediatrician said she's doing well," answered her husband. "Melinda will talk when she has something to say. Besides, I was a late talker and I turned out just fine."

The woman huffed in response. If her daughter was perfectly capable of unworking all the straps in her car seat and climbing out while they were stopped at the intersection, then she was perfectly capable of opening her mouth and saying ma.

"The pediatrician suggested we stop speaking Cantonese around her. Just English. Let her focus on one language at a time."

"The pediatrician is an idiot," said the man with a wry, pleasant smile that showed he was utterly unconcerned with the inconsistencies in his argument. "Cantonese is fine, Melinda is fine, and above all," he took her hand and kissed it, "you are fine."

There was a thump from upstairs. The cat.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," said the woman.

The man kissed her hand again. "It's worked before."

More thumps. And the tell-tale squeak of the office door opening.

The man stood. "I'll go shoo the cat out of your office." He bowed, gallant and ironic. "I know you hate getting cat hair on your work clothes."

The woman smiled, opened her mouth to thank her husband, but then stopped and furrowed her brow. "The cat is right behind you," she said.

There was a moment, less than a second, in which this information was processed, before both of Melinda May's parents ran down the hall to find their ever-curious, ever-dexterous daughter. Their daughter who had apparently climbed out of her crib, opened her bedroom door, gotten past the gate on the stairs, and tiptoed down to her mother's office. An office, which wouldn't be such a dangerous place for a baby except-

"No!" shouted the girl's mother, giving her a solid swat on the behind. "No! You never, never, never touch Mama's gun!"


	2. Age 5 - First Day of School

**First Day of School**

* * *

_Leo Fitz_

His cardboard castle blocks had been lost when they moved to the new flat, so now the only things he had left to build with were the cans and boxes in the pantry, even though they still had food in them. Didn't matter. This way he had provisions. He could outlast a siege. No one could break into his grocery fortress.

"Leo," sighed his mother, removing the box of store-brand cereal that had served as his roof. "Get out of there. I need to cook dinner."

"No," answered the boy, arms folded. "I'm not leaving my fortress."

"Fine. Then I'll just watch Dr. Who by myself."

He hesitated. She could see his resolve weakening, but then he shook his head as if to remind himself of something, and he returned to looking resolute. "No. I'm never coming out. I'm going to live in here until I'm an adult and I can live in a museum."

"Well, you're going to have a hard time getting a job in a museum if you don't go to school," she pointed out, reasonably.

At this, Leo covered his ears. "No more school," he cried. "Not ever! I hate it! I hate it and I'm never going back."

So that was the problem. Well, it certainly wasn't up for debate. "Don't be ridiculous, Leo. You're a clever boy. I'm sure school will be just fine."

"It's not _fine_. They don't even have a proper _library_. Just a bunch of picture books."

"We can still go to the real library on weekends. Besides, you need school to learn how to read."

Leo looked at his mother with a curious expression. "I can already read," he said, in an almost patronizing tone, as if he were explaining himself to an amnesiac.

"Of course you can," she answered, since there was really never a point in arguing with him. And there were the times he escaped from her at the grocery store and she'd found him flipping through the pages of mechanics magazines – she'd assumed he had been enjoying the pictures and the momentary freedom. "But you have to learn the school way to read. Besides, it's the law. Children have to go to school."

"No, it's not. I didn't go to school before now. I just stayed with Mrs. Potter."

She sighed. "We can't do that, Leo." Even if she wanted to spend six hours a day playing teacher, it just wasn't feasible. "Honey," she said, sitting down on the floor next to his fortress, "do you know that we're poor?"

"No, we're not," said Leo, because his idea of poverty was homeless people and whoever ended up receiving those pennies he collected for UNICEF.

"We are," she answered. Mrs. Potter had charged far less than the market rate for childcare, but it was still more than their little family could afford. "And staying with Mrs. Potter costs money, but school is free. It means we'll have more money for other things." It meant they would finally have a little bit of breathing room in a household budget that had been stretched to the limit.

"We're poor," echoed Leo, thinking over this new piece of information. "We're poor…because of Mrs. Potter?"

The woman was starting to regret discussing her finances with a five-year-old. She wanted him to understand, but at the same time, she didn't want him to feel guilty or responsible for their economic state. "No, no, not because of Mrs. Potter. If anything," she mused, "it's because of Mrs. Thatcher." She held out a hand. "Can you tell me what happened at school now?"

Leo rested his face on his balled-up fists. "They laughed at me. Everybody laughed at me, even the teacher. Just because I asked them where the laboratory was."

"Well, I'm sure-"

Leo interrupted his mother, who was no doubt trying to say something reassuring. "And that's not even the worst part!"

"What's the worst part, love?"

He wailed in response, "They don't even _have_ a laboratory!"

* * *

_Jemma Simmons_

"Take a good look at these shapes. Now look at this picture. If I move these shapes around, I can make them look just like the picture. Do you understand?"

Jemma nodded.

The woman turned the page in her book of puzzles. "Now you do it. You move the shapes around to make them look just like this picture. Go as fast as you-"

"I'm done. Sorry to interrupt."

They did more pictures. They found the missing piece in a pattern. They tried to remember numbers and words.

"Tell me, Jemma, how are a circle and a ball different?"

"A ball has height and a circle doesn't," said Jemma. "If you stretched a circle upward, off of the paper, you'd get…well, no, you wouldn't get a ball. You'd get a can. But if you stacked a whole lot of circles, starting with small ones, then bigger ones, then smaller ones again, then you would have a ball."

The woman read words aloud. Jemma had to choose the picture that went with each word. They did maths problems.

"A woman buys a used television set for 150 pounds. Since it was used, she got it for 50% of what it would have cost new. If she now bought that same TV new, how much would it cost?"

"That's not a good question," said the girl. "Because prices change. It must have been 300 pounds new when she bought it, but that might not be the price now."

In the end, the school agreed to enroll her in Year Three, so she began school with classmates two years her senior. Her parents were pleased with the arrangement, at least for the time being. Maybe in a few years, they'd be able to get her a scholarship and enroll her in a boarding school. But for now, at least, the testing had convinced the local comprehensive that she was as clever as her parents had claimed, and the Year Three curriculum would provide occasional challenges – in penmanship if nothing else.

So her mother dressed her in her uniform, packed her a lunch and sent her off to her first day of school.

"You're short," said a thin boy with long, unkempt hair.

"And you're rude," answered Jemma curtly.

The other girls giggled. One of the tallest made a shooing motion with her hand and told the boy to go away. She looked back at Jemma. "Sorry about Jesse. He's just a _boy_," she said in a tone that implied cooties and other unmentioned horrors. "I don't think I've seen you in school before. Are you new?"

Jemma nodded, eager to begin making new friends.

"I'm Emma," said the girl. "We like horses, and collecting stickers," she added, apparently the spokesperson for the female Year Threes. "What do you like?"

"I like collecting beetles."

Victoria pulled a face and there were many audible 'ew's.

Jemma found this disappointing, but she was used to solving problems head-on. She looked at the group of girls, making note of who was immediately disgusted, who gave a delayed reaction, and who had not responded at all. There was only one girl in the final category; she had dark skin and a pinched sort of face.

Jemma retained this information for recess. She approached the non-disgusted girl and introduced herself.

"I'm Uzma," said the girl. "And I don't much like beetles, but I don't dislike them either. I really like birds, though," she added, "birds and monkeys."

* * *

_Phillip Coulson_

Phillip Coulson will have a remarkable life. He will be sharp and loyal and clear-headed under pressure. He will remain mild-mannered and composed while facing down unimaginable monsters (though not when meeting his childhood hero). He will be murdered and resurrected.

But right now, he's five years old and his life is the nicest kind of normal. On his first day of kindergarten, there are no opportunities for heroism or bravery and the only conundrum to which he applies himself is deciding where to sit in the cafeteria (he opts to sit next to Jeffrey Schwartz, who agrees to swap half-sandwiches). He likes his teacher and he pushes in his chair and when he gets home, his mother greets him with a hug.

* * *

_Grant Douglas Ward_

Laura Morris missed her old job at Head Start. She didn't miss her old classroom, of course, with its buzzing fluorescent lights, at least one of which was always dead. Or the supply closet that seemed to run out of white copy paper by mid-October. Or the water fountain that tasted like someone had drowned a pigeon in it. Or the unbelievably tiny paycheck.

That was why she had applied to work at Creekside – the money. She had to start paying down her student loans and a chronically underfunded pre-K teaching position wasn't going to cut it. So she had swallowed her pride and called up her prissy Cape Cod sister-in-law, who knew someone who knew someone who worked at a fancy Massachusetts private school with small classes and unnecessarily stuffy uniforms and kids named Reginald. Really. There was an actual child in her kindergarten class named Reginald.

Deep down, though, the kids were basically the same. It didn't matter if they were wearing blazers and taking horseback lessons, they still needed their shoes tied and to be reminded to wash their hands. The parents, though…ugh. Laura always memorized all her kids from their photographs so she could greet them by name on the first day. At Head Start, the parents had been grateful. Here, they barely seemed to notice. Two of them had questioned her qualifications and more than half had pulled her aside to discuss how they expected their special little snowflake to get an edge.

Now, though, the parents were finally gone and the kids were settling in. Two girls were dressing up in plastic firefighter helmets. (One of them was quacking. Laura made a note of that.) Three kids were gathered around the marble race she had set up the night before. A shy, red-haired boy was staring intently at the class rabbit. She thought about getting Mr. Puff out of his cage, but decided to wait until they had fully discussed all the classroom rules for the handling of small mammals.

Then she heard a squeal. She spun around. The noise had come from a blond boy named Christoph (yuck) who had just been shoved off his feet by a furious, round-faced child. She put herself between the two small combatants, concerned but not alarmed. She knew how to handle fights.

"Grant, put your hands in your pockets." Name first, a 'do' command rather than a 'don't' command, de-escalate before you try to figure out the problem.

The boy made a frustrated noise, but he followed his teacher's direction. "He started it."

Christoph shouted back, "He pushed me!"

"He said that boys can't be secretaries!" Grant leaned forward as he shouted, but his hands were still in his pockets, so he stumbled slightly.

Laura bit back a laugh. Children fought about all sorts of things, ranging from the desperately serious (discovering that they shared a father) to the bizarrely semantic (whether a dog had 'long hair' or 'pretty hair'), but this was the first time she'd broken up a row about workplace gender equality.

"You have to keep your hands to yourself, Grant. Christoph, boys and girls can grow up to have all the same jobs."

"Yeah," said Grant, rubbing it in, "my dad is a secretary."

No, that couldn't be right. There weren't very many male secretaries, and they sure as hell didn't make enough money to send their children to Creekside.

"You think I'm lying," said Grant, apparently reading her expression. "I'm not lying. Don't call me a liar. He's a secretary and it's his job to sign documents! I'm not a liar!" His speech got faster and louder.

"I don't think you're lying, Grant. I'm sure your father signs a lot of documents," she said, placatingly. That was a great description of employment tasks. She'd have to save that one to share with her girlfriends.

"He _is_ a secretary," mumbled Grant, unhappily. The rage she had seen building a moment ago was now gone.

She sent the boys off to play in different corners of the classroom. Christoph played with the pattern tiles, his earlier scuffle forgotten. Grant went to the art center, but he just drew hundreds of parallel, vertical lines. He seemed bored.

And then Annalise spilled sand on her new shoes and the whole incident was forgotten.

* * *

Lunch was a break for teachers at Creekside. At Head Start, she'd spent her lunch period opening milk cartons and mopping up spills, but here they had staff to do those things. She collapsed into the teachers' lounge.

"Long morning?" asked Shelly…something with a P. Pearson? Pierce? Laura was usually pretty good with names.

"Really, not so bad. The rabbit got loose around 10 o'clock, but it didn't get far."

"I peeked in on you," said Shelly Whoever. "Things looked like they were going well."

"There was a little dust-up between Christoph Thompson and Grant Ward over employment discrimination." It _was_ kind of funny.

"Grant Ward," echoed Shelly. "I had his older brother a few years ago."

"Oh yeah? What was he like?"

"Hmmm…smart, good student. Kind of a stick-in-the-mud. I always thought there was something weird about his family, but it's always best to stay out of that sort of thing."

"Grant made up some story that his father was a secretary. That's how the little fight started."

Shelly made a sound between a cough and a laugh, then quickly covered her mouth to keep from

spraying lettuce bits all over. "You're new here, right?"

Laura nodded.

"And do you read the paper?"

"Sometimes," she said. Mostly if she happened to be waiting on a bus and there was nothing else to do.

Shelly reached over to the end table and picked up a copy of the day's news, which she passed to Laura. There was a picture of a stern-looking man in an unremarkable grey suit under the headline, "Department of Health and Human Services Announces Newborn Disease Screening Initiative." Underneath the picture was a caption, which read, "Secretary of HHS Stephen Ward addresses the press in the Mural Room."

* * *

_Melinda Qiaolian May_

Melinda's father wished that her mother could have been the one to bring her to school on the first day. Her English was better. And he was the only man in the entranceway, waiting with his child for their room assignment. Melinda, for her part, seemed entirely unconcerned. She was wearing a plaid jumper, freshly ironed, and her hair was in a single tight braid. She stood next to her father, staying close, but not leaning on his leg or holding his hand the way some children did.

"Mell…mell-in-da?" The parent volunteer at the front of the throng pronounced Melinda's name as if she had never seen such as word before and as if it contained the word 'melon'.

"_Melinda_," corrected her father, shuffling forward.

"Yes, of course," said the woman, nodding hurriedly with a bland smile on her face and no trace of apology. "She's in Mrs. Burrhus's class, down that hall, and make a left."

Melinda's father hesitated. All the other kindergarteners had been sent in the opposite direction. "She's in kindergarten," he said.

The woman pointed to Melinda. "She…class…" – the woman pointed to the left – "that way…teacher." She did her enthusiastic nod-and-smile again.

Melinda's father leaned forward, far enough to see the class assignment forms. Even if this woman was unpleasant, she was apparently giving them correct information. "Come along, Melinda," he said, "let's go meet your teacher."

The hallway they had been directed to was full of older children, perhaps in 3rd or 4th grade. He scanned the doorways for one labeled Burrhus, and when he found it, his heart dropped. It wasn't a full classroom. It was small and mostly empty. There were no decorations on the walls. The desks were in disrepair. There were no books, no art supplies, and the only visible toy was a battered game of checkers. There were four children already present, only one of whom looked like she might be in kindergarten. An older, stern-looking woman met them in the doorway. "She's here for ESL?"

He quickly tried to work out what the acronym might stand for. Melinda's mother was better at English. Elementary…special…learners? Education…study…language?

The teacher interrupted his thoughts. "English," she said in an over-precise tone. "She…learn…English?"

That's what this classroom was for. Foreigners' children. They kept them in this little room until they learned English. And it didn't look like anyone was all that concerned with providing them a quality education. "No, no," he said, feeling the slightest bit of panic, "she speaks English. Her English is very good." He had to choose each word carefully, make sure not to leave off an ending or skip a preposition. He tried to minimize his accent. "She was born here. She learned English her whole life. She should be in regular kindergarten." He could imagine exactly what had happened. They had heard her mother's accent when she went to register Melinda, and the girl had probably said nothing the whole time – not because she was unable to speak English, but because she was sparing with her words. They must have assumed that since she was Chinese, she must be foreign-born.

The teacher sighed. "Once she tests out, we'll-"

"No," he said. There was no way he was letting them neglect his daughter, stick her in this room with no resources while the rest of the children were learning. He knew what these classes were like. "She must be placed in a regular kindergarten today."

The teacher sighed again. "That's up to the principal, not me. I can call him down here if-"

"Please do." As soon as the teacher turned away to call the office, Melinda's father grabbed her by both shoulders. "I need you to trust me right now. I need you to speak English. A lot of it. Very good. Talk as much as you can, even if you have nothing to say. If they ask you a question, answer with long sentences, lots of words. Do you understand?"

"Why do-"

"I don't have time to explain right now. Trust me."

Melinda nodded. She followed her father's gaze to look at a portly man in a grey suit. The principal. She wasn't sure what was going on, but if her father wanted her to be talkative, then that was exactly what she was going to do.

"Hello!" she called out, taking a few steps forward and approaching him. "Are you a teacher or a principal? My name is Melinda and I'm starting kindergarten." She pointed backwards. "That's my father. He's a architect which means he makes all the plans for how they build a new building, like where all the rooms and walls and doors go. Like he has to add and subtract to make sure it fits together right. He's smart. Are we going to learn to do math in kindergarten? I hope so. I want to learn math like my dad." She paused for breath and looked back at her father.

The principal, for his part, smiled kindly and conferred privately with Mrs. Burrhus. After a moment, he turned to address Melinda's father. "We can provisionally place her in Ms. McMahon's kindergarten. If that doesn't seem like a good fit, we'll talk about moving her back here."

Melinda's father sighed with relief as the principal walked away.

"Did I do a good job?" asked Melinda.

He lifted her off the ground, kissed her forehead, and twirled her in a circle. "You did marvelous."

* * *

_Skye (Mary Sue Poots)_

Brenda Harris hung up the phone. "Thank the Lord!" she exclaimed. "We got ourselves a kid!"

Her sister Sandy whistled long and low, a sound of relief. They had four children between the two of them (five if you counted Brenda's oldest, who usually lived with his father) and the extra income they earned as foster parents went a long way toward making sure their bills got paid. "Coming at the start of next month?"

"No, they're bringing her by tonight," said Brenda.

"Tonight? Right after everyone started school?"

"Must've been a problem with her last placement. We get a pro-rated check for August."

They busied themselves fixing a bed for the girl and picking up a little before the social worker arrived. Of course, after all of that, the social worker didn't get there until past 9 o'clock, carrying the usual duffel full of clothes and few miscellaneous toys. She shuffled into their house followed by a thin, small girl with tan skin and long dark hair.

"My real mom was an astronaut," announced the girl, while the social worker introduced her as Mary Sue.

"Oh, really?" asked Sandy, more amused than skeptical. "It's late. Why don't I take you up to bed while Miss Brenda fills out the papers with your social worker."

"I don't need sleep. The doctor said it's something special with my eyes where they don't need to be closed. I don't blink either unless I want to. It's probably because of my dad, because he worked as spy for the CIA and they gave him special medicine so he wouldn't have to sleep and his kids wouldn't have to sleep either."

Mary Sue yawned.

* * *

"It is eight o'clock and then seventeen," said Mary Sue, looking at her watch. Having made her announcement, she resumed wiggling a loose tooth and dawdling along the sidewalk.

It was a cheap plastic watch with an unlicensed Disney knockoff on it, but it was digital and it worked, so that counted for something. Brenda and Sand often gave their foster kids cheap watches or calendars as welcoming gifts. Children in the system often had a precocious understanding of time. It gave them a sense of predictability and control when they were forced to live according to unreasonable adult schedules. It did not, however, guarantee that they had a meaningful notion of what it meant to be _on time_.

"Come on," said Brenda, waving her arm in an impatient circle. "We need to get there early because I don't think that your registration is-"

Mary Sue was no longer walking, instead choosing to devote her attention to a soda tab wedged into the sidewalk.

The woman grabbed her foster daughter's arm and hurried her into the building. She had already missed the first day of school and the chances that she was actually registered were slim to none. They went to the main office where Brenda found an administrator to whom she could explain their situation.

"So I'm guessing she's registered in another school across town, but she's going to be living with me for a little while and-"

"I was in Egypt," interrupted Mary Sue. "I was working for the museum people and I was digging for mummies and we found a mummy and it wasn't even haunted or anything so we were going to put it in a museum but before we could take it there, we got in this curse and we were stuck in a pyramid and that's why I wasn't at school yesterday."

The administrator choked back a laugh while Brenda scowled – she didn't approve of lying. "Go sit in that chair while we take care of these forms." She pointed to a navy blue kids' school chair in the corner of the office.

Mary Sue sighed dramatically and trudged to her assigned seat. Once she sat down, she began running her fingernails over the plastic to make a soft rumbling sound.

"I'll need you to fill out some of the registration forms and then we'll add her to Mr. Bronson's class."

Brenda Harris pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her purse and started to copy the girl's date of birth and social security number onto the clipboard. "I don't have a lot of this information," she said. "Allergies…medical history…honestly, they just dropped her off last night without…you know, they usually give us a file and some time to-" Brenda stopped. There was no plastic rumbling noise. She looked back in the corner to find Mary Sue's seat empty. She looked at the administrator, alarmed.

"Where did she-?"

"I'll go to the front-"

"Alyssa, can you check-"

And then they heard a young girl's voice coming from the side office: "You have to press A-L-T and four at the same time…no not that four, the other one. Right. And that makes the bad program go away."

Mary Sue walked back into the main office. "Your computers are old," she said. "Do I get to go to kindergarten now?"

* * *

**Note for non-Americans:** The U.S. president has a small group of powerful, trusted advisors known as his 'cabinet'. For historical reasons, these people are given the title 'Secretary'.


	3. Age 12 - Secrets

**Age 12, Secrets**

* * *

_Skye (Mary Sue Poots)_

The door was carefully propped open, just the way she'd left it, which meant Skye would only have to avoid a few creaky floorboards and she'd be back in her room undetected. She carefully navigated the stairs, confident that she could sneak past a few sleeping nuns. She opened her bedroom door, lifting the handle so the hinges wouldn't squeak, and slipped inside.

At which point she covered her own mouth to suppress a startled screech.

Matt Murdoch was sitting on her bed, cane balanced next to him, reading some enormous beige braille book in the dim light reflected from a streetlamp. He was a nice enough guy – pretty cute, actually. The nuns liked him because he actually paid attention at church. He was several years older than Skye, so they didn't interact too much. Besides, Skye spent as much time as possible on the computer while Matt kept to himself. Still, he had agreed to call her Skye instead of Mary Sue, and that endeared him to her.

"What are you doing in here?" hissed Skye, with as much urgency as she could cram into 10 decibels.

"You were out again," said Matt. "You smell like cologne."

"You're not going to tell, are you?"

"You smell like cologne," he repeated.

Skye sighed dramatically. "I hate it when you get all judgy." She flopped to the ground, resting her head on the side of his leg. "You're kind of a hypocrite. I mean, you have girlfriends."

"I'm not twelve and neither are my girlfriends."

"I'm mature," said Skye. "I'm old for my age."

"And how old is he?"

Skye didn't answer.

"Old enough to drive you home," said Matt, partially answering his own question.

"How did you know that?"

"I heard a car stop and someone got out. A few seconds later, you snuck inside." Matt paused, hoping Skye wouldn't argue with the logic. "How did you meet him?"

"I was with Krystal in the park and we were looking for someone to buy us beer."

"So he's old enough to buy beer."

"If I wanted a lecture, I would've woken up Sister Joan."

"This is the third time you've stayed out with him," said Matt.

Skye didn't ask how he knew. "I like him. He likes me. He thinks I'm special. He thinks I'm pretty."

"I'm sure he says those things. He might even mean them. You've got to wonder, though, why he can't get a girlfriend his own age."

Skye sighed again, but said nothing.

"Have you had sex with him?"

Matt didn't have to see to know that Skye was blushing. She shifted uncomfortably. "It's none of your business if I…you know."

"If you can't say the word then you're probably too young for it."

"Ma-att," she whined, "you're making me feel bad."

"A little guilt is good for the soul."

"Oh my god, you are so Catholic right now. What's next, are you going to lecture me on saving myself for marriage?"

Matt rested a hand on the top of Skye's head. "No. This isn't about saving yourself for marriage. It's about saving yourself." Maybe a little _too_ dramatic, thought Matt, but he was seventeen and he had a flair for false profundity.

They sat in silence. Skye thought about her boyfriend, how nice it was to have someone take an interest in her, focus on her, tell her she was important. Matt thought about Skye's boyfriend, too, about how easy it would be for a grown man to manipulate a foster kid with a few scraps of affection.

Finally, Skye spoke. "Matt," she whispered, "is it supposed to hurt?"

"Some women say it hurts the first time," said Matt, carefully. "But after that, no, it's not supposed to hurt."

"You're not going to tell on me, are you?"

"You're not going to see him again, are you?"

Neither one answered the other's question.

* * *

_Phillip Coulson_

Phil didn't like Chicago. They had moved about a year ago when his father's life insurance money had started to dwindle. His mother had promised him that there would be lots to like about their new home, but as far as Phil could see, Chicago was strictly inferior to Manitowoc. There was no place for him to ride his bike (not that he wanted to ride around in the sickly, stinking heat). There was no garage to work on cars (not that Phil really knew how, now that he had no father to guide him). There was no Boy Scout troop for him to excel in (actually, there was a Boy Scout troop, but they never went camping or did anything fun). It was just plain boring.

"We should do drugs," said Phil. He was sitting on the bus stop bench with his friends, Jorge and Joel. They weren't waiting for the bus. They were just there because it was someplace to sit.

"You got some?" asked Joel.

"No," Phil shook his head. "I was waiting for someone to try and peer pressure me, but I'm starting to think that's never going to happen."

"What kind of drugs?" asked Jorge.

"Does it matter? I'm so, _so_ bored. And we're almost teenagers. We should start acting like it."

Jorge and Joel nodded. Teenagers definitely used drugs. Phil was right about this, as he was about most things. They had already played all the basketball they could stand in the heat, traded comic books, flipped baseball cards, saved up for movies, and tried (unsuccessfully) to spy on some older girls who were sunbathing. In short, they had tried every non-narcotic pastime a Chicago summer had to offer.

Phil stood up and put his hands on his hips. He was a man of action. They weren't going to get stoned by just sitting around and debating the matter. "Now," he said, "where are we going to find drugs?"

"I think my uncle knows a dealer," said Joel, "but if we ask him, he'll tell my mom and I'll get in trouble."

Jorge shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe we should just look for a dealer."

Phil nodded sagely and they were off, strolling the streets in an ill-advised attempt to appear casual, though in actuality, their "inconspicuous" glances and "innocent" whistling made them exceedingly memorable. They were puffed up, heady with freedom and adolescence. They had no idea how a drug dealer looked.

The first man they approached turned out to just be a drunk who didn't appreciate being awoken while he slept in an alley.

The second time they spotted a potential target, their would-be dealer sent another customer off arm-in-arm with a scantily clad woman. Joel and Phil learned a few new words from Jorge.

The third guy they saw was sitting on the front steps of an apartment building, smoking a cigarette. He was clean and neatly dressed, but slouched down with his legs spread as far apart as possible. Phil wondered if other people had trouble walking past him to get into the building. He had a long overcoat – he wasn't wearing it; no one would wear a coat in this heat – but it was hanging on the rail next to him and he kept running his hands over the pockets, as if to ensure their contents hadn't disappeared.

Phil approached the man, flanked on either side by his friends. He tried to smile and make eye contact. Just because they were doing something illegal wasn't an excuse to be impolite. "Excuse me, mister," said Phil. "We're looking to buy drugs."

The man squinted one eye very small while opening the other very wide. "The hell you talking about?"

"Are you selling drugs? We'd like to buy some." At this, Jorge shifted his weight away from Phil, subtly disassociating himself from the transaction.

"Do you know what a _narc_ is?" asked the man.

Phil shook his head no.

"That's somebody who sells people out to the police. Good, hardworking people have to be careful because snitches screw everything up."

Phil tried to think of an appropriate response, but nothing came to mind.

"Nah, there's no way you're a narc," said the man. "Narcs aren't this stupid."

"Maybe I am a narc," answered Phil, "and I'm acting stupid so you'll think I'm too stupid to be a narc."

The man rolled his eyes. "You do _not _need to get high."

"Look, we have money," said Phil, pulling a handful of bills out of his pocket. "Can we buy something or not?"

"What do you want to buy?"

"Drugs," said Joel, helpfully.

The man tipped his head forward, mouth hanging open. This was utterly bizarre. He wondered if he was tripping; he blinked his eyes several times to be sure. And yet, the boys were still standing there, the leader holding out about six dollars cash. The man reached inside his jacket, past the pocket and into the lining. He retrieved a little plastic baggie of pot that he normally would have sold for five dollars, but he'd take the extra dollar as payment for putting up with this shit. He handed the baggie over and snagged the cash. "You boys know what to do with that?"

"Of course," blustered Jorge, already taking a step back.

That's when they ran. They knew they had done something daring, something wrong, and running just seemed like the right thing to do. It didn't matter that they weren't heading anywhere. They had run almost four blocks before they slowed down enough to discuss destination. They couldn't go to Joel's place because his little sister was there and she would definitely rat them out – "Narc," corrected Phil. They couldn't go to Jorge's place because his mother was home. That left Phil's apartment, where his mother would no doubt notice the smell when she got home from work. _Well,_ thought Phil, _let her notice._ _Maybe then she'll realize that Chicago is awful and we never should have left Wisconsin._

"Do you have any funk records?" asked Joel. "I think you're supposed to listen to funk. Or the Beatles."

"All my mom has is swing and jazz," said Phil, unlocking the door.

"Jazz is okay," said Joel. "My grandmother calls them 'jazz cigarettes' anyway."

It turned out that the boys did not, in fact, know what to do with their little baggie. They knew that it was supposed to be burned and smoked, but the technical details were elusive. Phil took one of his mother's cigarettes (which he wasn't supposed to know that she had) peeled back the paper and poured out the tobacco. Well, sort of. It was somehow both dry and sticky, which didn't seem possible. But he got most of it out, and he replaced it with the crumpled marijuana leaves. Holding the finished product, he suddenly felt hesitant. This was not, he was sure, how Captain America would have handled pre-adolescent stirrings of rebellion. But before Phil could give voice to his uncertainty, Joel had taken the makeshift joint and lit it.

Phil watched his friend take a coughing, shuddering breath.

"I don't feel any different," said Joel, passing the joint to Jorge.

"I think it takes time," said Phil. He watched Jorge inhale slowly, more steadily than Joel did. Jorge passed the joint to Phil. Phil gazed at it, aware that their precious stash was burning. He raised the joint to his lips, holding it between his middle and index fingers like a regular cigarette. Was this a bad idea? What would his mother think? Would this prevent him from holding elected office? And then before he knew it, he was inhaling and gagging and passing it along.

They proceeded to smoke the joint collectively, passing it around in a circle. There were no noticeable effects at first. Then they started laughing at things they wouldn't normally find funny and smiling at things that they would normally meet with affected cynicism. Jorge started speaking in slow, meandering Spanish, not caring if he was understood. Joel lay flat on his back and listened to jazz. Phil looked at the floors, the windows, his friends. He felt sideways, like gravity wasn't quite playing by the usual rules. This was a nice feeling, and one he wouldn't have been able to find in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Chicago wasn't that bad. He knew he really missed his father more than he missed some little town.

It was exciting.

It was strange.

It was okay.

(When Phil's mother came home, she grounded him for a month.)

* * *

_Melinda Qiaolian May_

Melinda's mother pulled her aside after church. "I'm going to tell you a secret," she said.

"Okay?" Melinda felt that was a confusing way to start a conversation, even for her mother, who had never really considered openness or explanation to be virtues.

"I don't believe in God," said her mom.

And that was a secret, that was a surprise. Mom went to church every Sunday. She read her Bible. She prayed before meals. Melinda herself was ambivalent on the subject, but she'd always assumed her mother was devout.

"You can't tell anyone. Not even your father."

"Why can't I tell Dad?"

"Because he does believe. And it would break his heart."

"Then why did you tell me?" asked Melinda.

"Because I need to know if you can keep a secret."

* * *

Three months passed without incident, without any mention of their strange conversation. Melinda May had kept her mother's secret.

"Get in the car," said her mother.

"I'm not done with my history homework."

"Right now."

Melinda glanced out the window to check for rain before settling on a light jacket and following her mother out to the garage. She didn't ask where they were going – if her mother wanted to tell, she would say something without an invitation from her daughter. It wasn't a sullen silence. Melinda was a patient girl and experience had taught her to trust her mother.

Melinda's mother drove them to the edges of town, where the houses were farther apart and there were fewer streetlights. She parked the car at the side of the road. "Melinda," she asked, "do you know what my job is?"

"You…work with photographs." That's the answer Melinda had been taught since she was young. It was only now, saying it aloud, that she realized how inadequate it was. 'Work with photographs'. What did that even mean? She definitely wasn't a photographer; their family photo albums were full of shaky, washed out, and badly composed pictures. Maybe a photo editor, like for a newspaper? But then why wouldn't her parents have just told her that?

"Yes," said Melinda's mother. "And you know I work for the government. And now I'm going to give you a third clue. Look in the sky. Do you see those three stars in a line?" She pointed. "Look right there. Don't look away." She glanced at her watch. "It will be there soon."

Melinda gazed at the sky as directed. She'd never been terribly interested in space. It was, as far as she was concerned, mainly a waste of time. She could see the three stars in a line, but she couldn't see what was so special about them. Couldn't see why she should bother looking, until- There. It was faint, but it was there. A thin, pale dot moving right above the three stars. It wasn't as bright as a shooting star. It was moving too fast to be a planet. It could only be… "A satellite," Melinda breathed.

"That's right. I work with photographs, for the government, doing something that is related to satellites." Her mother ticked off each clue on a finger. "So what is my job?"

Melinda stared at the stars and thought: who works for the government with satellites and pictures? And it's secret, at least somewhat secret? "You're a spy," she breathed.

Her mother tipped her head down and up, a single nod. "I don't do fieldwork. I never have. I analyze photographs taken by spy satellites. I come to work and there is a folder with my name on it. The folder is full of images. I try to determine whether a grey blob is an army or a farm house or a nuclear testing facility."

Melinda was almost frozen with the shock of her mother's revelation. Clandestine intelligence was the sort of career you heard about on television, not the kind you expected to find in real life.

"I have a colleague," continued Melinda's mother, "who I'll call…Mr. S. Mr. S used to do fieldwork, but he's older now, and now he does the same thing that I do." She paused and took a deep breath. "Yesterday, Mr. S arrived at his job, got his folder and opened it up, just like every day. Just like every day, there were pictures from the satellites. But there was also a picture of his son." She could hear her daughter gasp, but she kept talking. "Your father and I debated whether or not to tell you. He doesn't want to frighten you, give you secrets you're not prepared to handle. I know you can handle secrets. I think you're stronger than he gives you credit for."

"It's a threat," said Melinda, still thinking through the meaning of the photograph in Mr. S's folder. "Someone's threatening him. Did someone threaten you?"

"No. There have been no threats made against you or me or your father. As I said, Mr. S used to do fieldwork. He made enemies."

"But he works with you. And somebody got in there to threaten him."

"I don't want you to be frightened, but I want you to take reasonable precautions."

"What precautions do you take?" whispered Melinda.

Her mother turned around and walked back to the car, pointedly declining to answer. "Get in," she said.

Melinda obeyed and climbed into the passenger seat, feeling older than she had only a few moments ago, when she hadn't known that her mother worked with classified data, that her coworker had received a terrifying threat. She looked out the window. The world looked the same, but it didn't _feel_ the same. She blinked. They weren't driving back home. "Where are we-"

"Mm-mm," Melinda's mother silenced her with a sound and a gesture. She drove on, to a part of town Melinda couldn't recall ever having seen before, to a non-descript red brick building. There was no sign on the outside. It occurred to Melinda that perhaps she had seen this building before, but it was so unremarkable that it had slipped from her mind. "Come on," said her mother, starting into the building. "I have permission to take you onto the range." She opened the door and looked back at her daughter. "It's time you learned to fire a gun."

* * *

_Leopold Fitz_

"Oi! Fitzy!"

Leo Fitz let out a long-suffering sigh. He put a great deal of effort into maintaining a middle-class appearance, into affecting dialect and mannerisms that didn't immediately mark his as poor. The boy calling his name, however, was thoroughly chav and didn't have the decency to be ashamed of that fact.

The boy's name was Jono, or at least that's what he went by, and his friendship with Leo was very difficult to explain. Jono was gangly, awkward, rude, and not terribly bright. He tended to get impatient with other kids, to accidentally break their belongings or ruin their games, and say the wrong thing and the wrong time. He was unpopular and poorly groomed and when he was asked to compose a school essay on the topic of his own life twenty years in the future, he wrote that he expected to have a great deal of gambling debt.

(Leo, conversely, wrote about the high-efficiency atmospheric ionization detector he hoped to invent by then.)

Neither boy could really say when they had become friends. There was no defining incident, no moment when Jono saved Leo from bullies or Leo helped Jono pass a test. They didn't like each other very much. They were inseparable.

"Fitzy," whined Jono. "It's cold in here. I'm gonna go up the thermostat."

"Don't touch it," said Leo, sitting down at the kitchen table to do his homework. "My mum keeps it low on purpose. It saves money." He made a grumbling noise. "And stop calling me Fitzy."

They generally spent their afternoons at Leo's flat, despite the chill, since Jono's flat was terribly crowded and hanging out in the streets was just asking for trouble.

Despite having just complained about being too cold, Jono opened the refrigerator. "You don't got any beer," he said.

"My mum doesn't drink beer," said Leo. "She drinks wine."

"What about your dad?"

"I don't have a dad."

"That can't be right," said Jono. "We learned about it in Health class, how you get the egg and the sperm and-"

"I _have_ a dad," clarified Leo, "biologically speaking. I just never see him."

"Why not? Is he a criminal?"

"He's not a criminal!" yelped Leo, inexplicably defensive.

"Well, if you never see him, how do you know he's not a criminal?" asked Jono, perfectly reasonable for once.

* * *

For most of his life, Leo had simply ignored the question of his paternity. He had a vague awareness that checks came in sporadically, often enough to help but not often enough to be relied upon. He knew that most children had two parents and that he did not, but he rarely gave the subject much thought. When he did think about his father, he imagined a very intelligent, very busy man. His father would have to be very intelligent, because Leo knew that he himself was clever, that heredity played a role in intellect, and that his mother was no crack genius. Leo believed his father to be busy because it was the simplest explanation for their lack of contact.

But now he was thinking about it, thanks to stupid Jono and his stupid questions.

He knew better than to ask his mother. She always refused to answer questions about his father, and got cross with him if he begged.

Where to start?

It would be complicated, but that was okay. Leo knew how to handle complicated things. He was clever. His inventions always had multiple interacting systems. He was used to dense, convoluted problems. Compared to temperature-dependent reversible polymerase reactions, finding out about his birth father would be a snap. Right?

He starts with the checks. They give him a name, Leonard Finley. (Don't some Leonards go by Leo?) They don't give his father's address, but they do have the address of the bank that issued them. It's in Northern Ireland, in Belfast. He calls the bank. He uses the internet. He tells a number of lies. He finds out what he needs to know.

Except what he finds out isn't really what he wants to know. He has an address and a phone number and a passport photograph. They do look alike. But he doesn't know anything about his father, whether he's a clever man, whether he's a criminal.

So Leo begins phase II of his plan. This phase requires money, quite a bit of it. More than he could ever pilfer from his mother's purse. Like most boys his age, Leo feels entitled to a couple hundred pounds, but unlike most boys his age, he has the means to acquire it: his inventions. Most are useless and can't be mass-produced, but he has a simple one, a wet-start lighter that he knows he can market to the construction workers who loiter near his school. He had set it aside almost a year ago because it wasn't terribly interesting, but now, now he makes dozens of copies and peddles them to every smoker he knows, not to mention a few pyros. He figures out his mother's exact work schedule. He persuades Jono to offer a cover story in exchange for a week worth of maths homework.

And then he got on the train. He was too nervous to read the novel he'd stuffed in his knapsack next to his careful handwritten itinerary. He had to go from the bus to the train to another train to the ferry to a bus. The trip would take about seven hours even if there were no delays. And at the end of it, he'd show up at Leonard Finley's bedsit. The train was filthy and that bothered Leo greatly. He tried to get some paper towels from the lavatory and clean it, but the transit ladies made him stop. The ferry was cleaner, but it made him sea sick. Or maybe he already felt sick. He was sweating a lot. Maybe he was coming down with something.

The Belfast busses were dirty, too. He got on the wrong one and had to double back, now seated next to a woman whose overwhelming perfume made him gag.

Leo didn't let himself linger by the door. He knew that if he did, he'd hesitate for hours. So instead, he rushed forward, knocking so hard his knuckles hurt. What if he wasn't home? Maybe he worked night shifts. That was certainly possible. Maybe he moved. Maybe he's in the military or on safari or-

The door opened.

"Are you Leonard Finley?"

The man's shoulders slumped and he exhaled. "Did your mum send you? You want more money, is that it?"

"No, no, it's not…can I come in? You are Leonard Finley, then? Aren't you?" asked Leo, pressing forward when no invitation was forthcoming. The flat was dingy and poorly lit. It had a pungent smell that, years later, Leo would identify as marijuana. "We've never met. I mean, not that I remember, but I think you're my-"

Finley waved a hand. "I don't know what your mum told you, but-"

"She didn't tell me anything!" cried Leo. "But you send us money! And you lived in Dundee before I was born! And we look alike!"

"I don't want to speak ill of your mum," said Finley, "but there were other men. A number of them. She always said you were mine because she thought she could get her claws into me."

Leo took off his knapsack and began rummaging in it. "We can find out, though. All I need is a few drops of blood. See, I'm type A-positive and my mum is type O-negative, so my father must be A-positive or AB-positive." He retrieved a small case full of plastic vials, a mobile chemistry set.

"I'm not giving you my blood, boy. I've given you and your mum more than you deserve."

"Are you colorblind? Are you red-green colorblind?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You have a cleft chin. I do and my mother doesn't. It's a dominant trait, so one of my parents must have it."

"Lots of men have cleft chins."

"You have a widow's peak and no hair on your second knuckle. Just like me."

"What are you, the hair police?!"

Leo kept on talking as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Now I need to know if you're red-green colorblind. Because any one of those traits is common, but all four together is quite rare." Leo dug in his backpack again, this time pulling out a library book and opening it to the bookmarked page. "Can you see the numbers in this circle?"

Finley slammed the book shut. "Look boy, I don't want any part of this. Okay? Now call your mum and go home."

Leopold Fitz stood perfect still for a moment. This was not what was supposed to happen. He was supposed to find a kindred spirit, someone who could understand him, who could challenge him and mentor him.

The moment dragged on and Finley shifted uncomfortably. "Hey, I-"

"You idiot," breathed Fitz. "You don't know what you've given up. You could've had me as a son, and I may not be perfect, but I _am_ a genius. If you had invited me in here like a decent human being, I could've fixed your broken telly. I made four hundred pounds in three days at the age of twelve selling my inventions. Just imagine what I'll be up to in a few years. And you're going to have to imagine, because you just lost the chance to ever see me again."

With that, Fitz re-packed his knapsack and walked out the door, not even chancing a goodbye. It was foggy, but it wasn't raining. That seemed wrong, but whatever. Fitz couldn't control the weather. Yet. Fitz couldn't control the weather yet. Finley might have been calling after him, but Fitz couldn't really hear anything in that direction. He might have been crying. He wasn't sure. He walked a few blocks until he found a payphone. He deposited quite a lot of money and waited for his mother to pick up the phone.

"Mum? It's me." He swallowed a sob. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm in Belfast and I want to come home."

* * *

_Jemma Simmons_

Jemma had three secrets, which she felt was quite a lot for a twelve-year-old. Four secrets, really, depending on how you counted them. It was sometimes hard to tell whether you were dealing with two distinct secrets or a single secret with multiple subelements.

Her first secret was stored in a freezer, in one of the lesser-used laboratories at her local college.

Her second secret was in an envelope which she kept between her mattress and boxspring.

Her third secret had no physical manifestation, except for the pattern of chemical and electrical impulses which formed her thoughts.

It started with a phone message.

"Uzma called?"

Jemma and Uzma had never ended their friendship, but they had drifted apart. After all, Uzma was moving through grades at the normal rate while Jemma was studying for her A-levels. With each passing year, they had less and less in common.

"Yeah," said Jemma's older brother. "She wants you to come over her place tomorrow."

So arrangements were made and the two girls chatted in the back garden, catching up on each other's lives. "It's not that I didn't just want to see you," said Uzma, when the reminiscences died down, "but I need your help."

"With what?" Jemma furrowed her brow. What could Uzma need, that she could possibly provide?

"It's to do with birds. They're dying. Sparrows especially, but others too. I find their bodies."

"That's sad," said Jemma, sympathetic and sincere. "But birds do die. Shall we bury them?"

Uzma shook her head. "That's not- It's more birds dying that usual. And there's something wrong with the eyes. They look…popped, like a balloon. You were always smart about these things. No one is taking this seriously. You can figure it out, right?"

A _real_ puzzle, not the fake science experiments they did in school where they answers were already well known. A genuine problem for her to solve. She didn't have all the information. She had no training in zoology. She didn't even have a viable hypothesis.

"Yes," said Jemma. "I'll figure it out."

The first thing they had to do was find more dead birds. Uzma hadn't preserved the ones she'd saved, so they were all but useless for biological analysis. But Uzma was right – there were a lot of dead birds; within an afternoon, they had collected eight specimens with the blown-eye sign and four without. She handled the birds carefully, using sterile procedure to ensure that her own microbiome didn't infect their bodies. But what to do with them? Her parents wouldn't approve of this project and neither would her school. Too messy, too risky.

Jemma attended Science Club on weekends and over the summer. It was a program offered by the local college to talented young people. Post-doctoral students gave lectures and led them in advanced lab activities. Jemma liked Science Club because it gave her an opportunity to pursue challenging investigations and because her post-doctoral mentor, Val Gianetti, was quite attractive. (Jemma loved to watch Val handle a scalpel and she was confident there was no more enticing sight in the world.) And now, Jemma liked Science Club because it gave her access to a laboratory where she could dissect and preserve twelve dead birds.

She wasn't supposed to be there on her own. She was also fairly sure that she wasn't supposed to bring unrequested dead birds into the lab, but as that wasn't specifically forbidden, she decided to assume that it was acceptable. And as for entering the lab unaccompanied, well, that was more of a problem, but Jemma was twelve years old and quite capable of keeping a secret.

It took Jemma seven-and-a-half weeks to find the solution (she maintained that her Latin A-level suffered because of it), but when she examined the output from her final PCR test, she felt a rush of pleasure unlike anything she had experienced before. The birds were dying of an ocular fungal infection, an invasive species first identified in West Africa. The results fit. The solution made sense. The puzzle was solved.

And of course, she had to disseminate her findings, so she submitted them under a pseudonym –Margaret Carter. She was a published author and that was secret, too.

Her secrets made her bold. She began to question her parents' plan that she live at home and take classes at the local college. She used her pseudonym again and submitted an application, conveniently smudging her year of birth, but accurately reporting her academic and scientific achievements.

For the past three days, Jemma Simmons had gone to bed lying atop a letter granting her (or, more accurately, Margaret Carter) admittance to Oxford University.

She didn't really know what to do with the letter. She'd have to show her parents eventually. Val would know what to do – sweet, beautiful, clever Val – so Jemma tucked the acceptance letter into her Science Club binder.

Val's laugh was deep and rhythmic and it made the acceptance letter shake. "That's a problem most people would love to have, Jemma."

"I didn't have my parents' permission to apply."

"They're going to be proud of you either way," said Val. "They might be a little surprised at first, but they'll come around. I've met your parents. They're good people." Val wore an expression of bemused concern.

Jemma saw an opening and sat down next to her mentor, leaning a little bit close.

"You're really torn up about this?" asked Val. "If it's that big a deal, maybe I could go with you to talk to them."

No, Jemma didn't want her parents to talk to Val. She was rather possessive. She shook her head. "I'll…I'll work it out, I'm sure."

"Of course you will," said Val.

Jemma was still leaning against Val's side, increasingly aware that they were the only ones in the room. She licked her lips as they had gone quite suddenly dry. She fixed her courage to the sticking place (she'd always liked that phrase), tilted her head up, and leaned in for a kiss.

Val stood up and took a step backward. "No, no, no way, not a chance."

Jemma felt like she had just woken up from a dream. What on earth had come over her? "I'm- I- It wasn't-"

Val knelt down, safely out of kissing range. "It's all right. I mean, don't do it again. I could get in huge trouble. You need to find someone your own age." Val paused, obviously seeing the problem with that plan. "Or maybe a couple of years older than you. But not someone like me. I'm more than twice your age."

Jemma nodded quickly. She was red in the face and trying not to cry. Oh, this was humiliating!

"Jemma," said Val, "have you told anyone you're lesbian?"

"I'm not," whispered Jemma. She was crying now.

"Sweetie," said Val, gesturing to her own curvy figure, "if this is what you like…it's all right if you like women. I'm not judging. I just want to make sure things are okay, that no one's giving you trouble about being gay."

"I'm not, though. I mostly like boys. Boys and you."

"You're bisexual?" Val was almost jealous – she wished she had that level of self-awareness at the age of twelve.

"I don't know. I just know that I found you very attractive."

Val took Jemma's hand and placed the acceptance letter in it. "There's nothing wrong with knowing what you want in life. It doesn't have to make sense. There are too many variables to expect a fully deterministic system. Some of the guidelines people put on relationships, like those about gender, are superstitious nonsense. Other guidelines, like those about age, might not be such a bad idea." She turned Jemma's hand over and kissed it gallantly. "Now let's get you to Oxford."

* * *

_Grant Douglas Ward_

"Thank you, Tyler. That was wonderful." Lori Noonan tried to keep a little bit of enthusiasm in her voice, but after two dozen middle school theater tryouts, she was admittedly getting worn down. She looked at her list. Was Tyler the last? No, she had one more. Grant Ward. Well, that was unexpected. Lori hadn't interacted much with Grant directly, since she'd never had him in her classes, but the boy had a reputation, and it wasn't as an artsy drama kid. If anything, he was known as a jock, a talented athlete who would have been first string on all the school teams if he weren't constantly being benched for injuries. She knew he got in a fair bit of trouble, and that he'd been referred out for mental health services more than once. (That sort of information wasn't supposed to get around, but it always did.) Teachers called him a loner, but she'd seen him in the courtyard in the mornings, playing Go against the older boys, so maybe he had some basic social skills. Of course, he'd also been seen ripping pages out of a book and burning them in a waste paper basket. So there was that.

Well, she couldn't keep him out of the school play on reputation alone. She walked to the classroom that served as a waiting area and called his name. As they walked back to the empty auditorium, he stayed a step behind her, always angling his body so he faced her head-on. He seemed to be slouching, but his back was actually straight. It was his neck that slumped forward.

"To try out for the play, you need to present a soliloquy, Grant. Did you prepare one?"

"I thought it had to be a monologue."

Lori switched into her English teacher voice. "A soliloquy is another name for a monologue."

"No, no it's not." Grant stopped in the hallway. "Soliloquy is talking to the audience. Monologue is any time one guy talks on and on. I prepped a monologue, but it's not a soliloquy."

"Yeah, yeah that's right." That wasn't a distinction she would have ever bothered to make with middle schoolers. "Which mono-"

"Everybody has to go to every practice, right?" asked Grant. "No matter what part you get. You have to go to all the practices."

"Are you planning on missing some practices? Because I require students to tell me up front whether they're going to be available for all the rehearsals."

"No, no. I can be there. I'll be there. I can come even when it's not my part. I'll help out with the sets or something."

They were back to the auditorium. She gestured for Grant to climb the stairs and get on stage. "What monologue are you going to present?" She had distributed a list of appropriate choices to the middle school English teachers.

"It's the president from _Dr. Strangelove_, when he's on the phone with the Russian premier."

That was definitely _not_ on her list of recommended monologues for aspiring preadolescent thespians. It's not that it was inappropriate, per se. _Dr. Strangelove_ had a few pseudo-sexual jokes about the communists and their interests in 'precious bodily fluids', but nothing racier than the average pop song. No, the president's scene (and Grant was right, it was a monologue, but not a soliloquy) was a difficult mess of comedic timing in which the actor had to react to someone who not only wasn't there, but was also behaving in a strange and unrealistic manner. He had to inform the Russians that they were the target of a rogue hydrogen bomb and get politely indignant at the same time. She had used the scene many times with her senior seminar students, discussing the theatric elements that made it work.

It was either an ambitious choice or a poor decision.

"Do you need a moment to prepare, Grant?"

Grant looked confused. "I already prepared it," he answered, before immediately launching into his lines. Holding an imaginary telephone to his ear, he asked Dmitri Kissoff to "turn the music down a little" and informed him of the rogue bomb that was heading his way.

He was nailing it. The kid was utterly nailing it. It was a really tricky scene. The president's phrasing and intonation had to be alternately cheerful and annoyed, with occasional moments of deliberate, exaggerated seriousness. There were layers to the performance. There was _timing_. Honestly, Lori didn't expect 12-year-olds to do anything more than memorize their lines and stand on stage without wetting themselves. This was something else entirely.

"Let me finish, Dmitri. Well listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you _imagine_ how I feel about it, Dmitri? Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello? _Of course_ I like to speak to you! _Of course_ I like to say hello! Not now, but anytime, Dmitri."

The expression on his face was so perfectly tolerant and condescending. Lori had the excited, buzzing feeling that she might have discovered a prodigy.

"I'm sorry too, Dimitri. I'm very sorry. I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we're both sorry, all right? All right."

Grant hung up his imaginary phone and immediately shrugged off his acting persona. And the way he could switch it on and off – go from mumbling, brooding youth to pratfalling politician, and right back again (for Grant was now sitting on the edge of the stage, legs hanging off, arms folded against his belly) in the span of minutes. It was uncanny.

"Grant, have you seen _Dr. Strangelove_?" asked Lori.

"Yeah. I watched it to practice for this."

"The president is on the phone with Dmitri, right? But we never hear what Dmitri is saying, right?"

Grant emitted an affirmative grunt.

"What do you think Dmitri was saying to the president?"

Grant shrugged. "Probably says hello."

And that was when Lori remembered where she had seen a performance like the one she had just seen: when Peter Sellers played the president's role in _Dr. Strangelove_. Grant's presentation wasn't an homage to Sellers' performance, it was _exactly_ like Sellers' performance. Every gesture, every expression, every pause. This wasn't acting, it was mimicry. Oh, but it was incredible mimicry. The best she'd ever seen.

"You watched the whole movie?" she asked.

"Yup."

"Do you think there was a message?" She was testing his comprehension. _Dr. Strangelove_ was not a subtle film.

Grant stood up. "Look," he said, "I don't really care what part I get. It was good enough for me to be in the play, right?" He hopped down off the stage and walked out of the auditorium without waiting for an answer.

* * *

"Can I hold your gun?" Grant was lying on the floor of the hallway outside of his father's study, his legs propped up on the wall, tossing and catching a ball with one hand.

"No," said Morris.

"I won't point it at anybody. And I'll leave the safety on."

"No," said Morris.

"I won't even touch the trigger."

"Grant, do you realize that handing my weapon to a civilian while I'm on duty guarding your father would literally be treason?"

"Harrison let me hold his gun." Harrison had been their primary Secret Service agent, when Mr. Ward served on the cabinet. Now Ward was back in the legislative branch and they had Morris from the Capitol Police.

"No, he didn't," said the man, more tolerant than annoyed.

Grant sort of liked Morris. He was surprisingly patient, at least. He would chat with Grant while he was standing guard. At least he would on most days. Every once in a while, he would demand that Grant go away and let him concentrate on his job. Grant was unsure whether Morris did this because he had to be particularly alert for threats or because he didn't feel like talking to a kid.

"How do they train you guys?"

"Most Capitol Police have experience in the armed services or law enforcement. Then we get further physical training and they teach us more about how to guard someone."

"Can you kill someone with your bare hands?"

"I think just about anyone could kill with their bare hands if they really wanted to do it," mused Morris.

"If you caught an assassin and you couldn't put handcuffs on him, would you break his neck?"

"That has never happened in this history of law enforcement."

Grant scoffed. "You're not like other cops."

"Really? How's that?"

"Because you're just supposed to watch my Dad, right? You don't do anything else."

"That's not exactly-"

"No, I mean…like if a cop is coming to a school to talk about drugs and he sees someone getting mugged, he has to go stop the mugging. But you just have the one job and other stuff doesn't matter."

"My first priority is the safety of my protectee." Morris paused. He reflexively glanced around as if to ensure that no one was within earshot. "That means I keep secrets. Look, what if there was a senator who liked to do drugs…we'll call him Mr. Smith."

"Don Smith, from Nebraska?"

Morris squinted at the kid. "No, it was just a made up name. How about a Mr. Zee? Is there a Mr. Zee in congress?"

Grant shook his head.

"Okay, so there's this Mr. Zee who likes drugs. And I've got to protect him. But if I were a regular cop and I saw him doing drugs, I'd have to arrest him. So he starts to hide from me. Tries to give me the slip. Now I can't protect him. Now he's vulnerable and I can't do my job. You see, kid? That's why I have to keep secrets. Absolute confidentiality. Your dad has to be able to trust me, even with something that might be personally or politically embarrassing."

"Yeah," said Grant, throwing and catching the ball again, "I get it."

"I'm telling you this because…" Morris looked up and down the hall again. "I want you to know – It's not that I don't see things, all right? It's not that I don't care."

Grant said nothing.

Morris pulled a pen out of his pocket. "You want me to sign your cast?"

* * *

As soon as she looked at him, Grant knew what was called for, even if he didn't know why.

"I'm sorry, Mother." He hung his head, showed shame, showed submission. "I'm so sorry." The fact that he didn't know what he was apologizing for didn't make his apology any less sincere. He pressed his hands to his scalp so his forearms lay parallel over his face. "Please don't be mad. I'm sorry."

Then things were happening and displaying guilt didn't matter anymore. Grant didn't want to be at home, in the room with his mother, so he wasn't. He was Peter Sellers. He was the president. He was on the red hotline phone with Russian Premier Dmitri Kissoff.

_Yes! I mean, if we're unable to recall the planes, then I'd say that, uh, well, we're just going to have to help you destroy them, Dimitri. I know they're our boys._

When it was over, Grant went to bed, though it wasn't even 8 o'clock yet. He didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to face Christian or Thomas. He lay under the covers and felt very small. He went through his monologue again.

_I'm sorry too, Dimitri. I'm very sorry._

* * *

For the curious, you can see the Dr. Strangelove monologue on Youtube by searching: dr strangelove president monologue

I tried to pull it off in high school and utterly failed.


End file.
